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Eoghan Kavanagh at The Factory Space

Just back from the opening of a new exhibition at a new gallery, called The Factory Space over at Design Factory's offices on Capel Street. It's a great space for one situated at basement level; well designed, great angles and architectural features, dramatic access, beautiful finishes, well lit, lots of wall and very well broken up to allow for different elements or parts or themes of an exhibition to be presented separately or to stand alone.

It's another exciting departure (among many down the years) for Stephen Kavanagh and Conor Clarke, co-founders of Design Factory (certainly one of the best graphic design businesses in Ireland) and great advocates of quality in commercial communications. They have a good list of shows already planned for the coming months, including one for marking their own forthcoming publication.

The exhibition itself is of photographs by Eoghan Kavanagh, exploring Irish landscape both straight-on and slightly abstracted. Eoghan doesn't appear to use digital manipulation at all but rather in order to achieve his artistic vision he would seem to spend a lot of time choosing and planning locations and then waiting for natural effects to emerge from the changing light on the landscape; and then uses camera-based settings to bring out particular aspects/colours/relationships in the scene before him. Technically the shots are the business in every way, and most of them also achieve the direct and powerful bolt that great photography requires for it to reach towards "art". There's one or two that I thought a bit cliched as subject matter (the stacked up lobster pots, the tracks through the crop fields) but even those are so perfectly produced and then reproduced they are worth spending time with.

Get yourself over there before the 30th of October: 100 Capel Street; Tuesday to Friday, 10 am to 5 pm; or Saturday 12 noon to 5 pm.